The Romanian government has officially requested UNESCO to withdraw Bucharest's application to make Rosia Montana a protected world heritage site. The move prompted outrage and protests over the ruling PSD's apparent links with the company that wants to turn the site into a commercial gold mine, writes Claudia Ciobanu.

Football can be a force for good and democratisation but it can also shelter some of the worst aspects of society, like corruption and money laundering to mask illegal activities, warns MEP Stelios Kouloglou.

The EU is still failing to address the issue of state capture in the Balkans and, by choosing stability over democracy in the region, has been undermining its own credibility and values. But now it must take strong actions in view of the 2025 admission perspective, writes Shpend Ahmeti.

Twelve EU member states offer ‘golden visas’ to the super rich. In return for some form of investment, non-Europeans receive residency and often a second passport and access to the whole of the EU. The potential for corruption is huge, writes Rachel Owens.

Curbing corruption is not a quick-fix and there is no single universal cure for it. However, there is more hope than ever that the endemic spread of corruption can be contained and ultimately reduced, argues Adina Turk.

The judiciary in Bulgaria has been a victim of political dependence and of civil society indifference, the only novelty now is that even the European Commission is willing to close its eyes, writes Krassen Nikolov.

Last week the European Commission dealt another blow to the Western Balkans by promising an accession strategy for Montenegro and Serbia while neglecting the other four Balkan countries, Hashim Thaçi, the president of Kosovo, writes in an exclusive op-ed for EURACTIV.

Between 2014 and 2017, Ukraine's leadership failed to transform the country's old post-Soviet Russia oligarchic system into a European and Western-style democracy. The transformation is inefficient and slow, and this entails risk, writes Roman Rukomeda.

The EU has a duty to ensure that its update of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive requires the details of company owners to be made public, to avoid a repeat of the Panama Papers scandal, writes Emily Wigens.

The fight against corruption, so highly supported by Brussels, has become a witch-hunt with prosecutors, judges, the secret services and the president all protecting their business interests, writes Norica Nicolai.

Despite a wave of similar grassroots anti-government protests elsewhere, particularly in the US, the roots of the present wave of protests in Romania lie in the political and economic failures of the country’s post-communist transition, writes Bogdan Enache.

In Romania, politicians were preparing to legalise political corruption, and elsewhere the misuse of EU funds makes headlines every day. Sandor Lederer asks why has the Commission decided not to release an in-depth anti-corruption report.

Croatia’s drawn out energy dispute with Hungary has possibly dampened its hopes of acting as an energy hub for the EU, as Brussels looks to bring in more gas from the east. The newest bloc member has a lot of work to do to repair rifts, writes Mehmet Öğütçü.

Current debate rarely attributes the rise of populism in European politics to the perceived prevalence of corruption. Yet public opinion often shows that citizens believe their representatives to be corrupt, write Laurence Cockcroft and Anne-Christine Wegener.

In signing four projects with Ukrainian officials in Brussels today, EIB will have fulfilled its €3 billion obligation to Ukraine. Instead of providing general aid, the EIB supports very specific projects, writes Vazil Hudák.

Romania’s parliamentary election campaign pits the nation’s political elite against what could be described as the EU’s bureaucratic elite, embodied by incumbent Prime Minister Dacian Cioloş, writes Doug Henderson.

This week, the European Court of Auditors will report on how the EU spends taxpayer money. For once, the worst offending member states will be named and shamed, with Hungary set to top the list. This should just be the starting point, insist Bart Staes and Benedek Javor.

It is crucial that the EU continues to help Ukraine fight its 'culture of corruption' in its struggle to establish democracy and integration into the West, writes Mark Demesmaeker on its 25th independence day anniversary.

Giovanni Kessler, the director-general of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), is alleged to have wrongly listened in on telephone conversations as part of a previous OLAF investigation. Helen Xanthaki argues that the case should inspire the EU to reassess the structure of OLAF.

Ukraine today is very different from what it was two years ago, before the Revolution of Dignity, not only because of the illegal occupation of the Crimea, and parts of the Donbass, writes Kálmán Mizsei.